Only Two Can Play

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Only Two Can Play

Directed by	Sidney Gilliat
Produced by	Leslie Gilliat
Written by	Kingsley Amis (novel), Bryan Forbes
Starring	Peter Sellers Mai Zetterling Virginia Maskell
Music by	Richard Rodney Bennett
Cinematography	John Wilcox
Release date(s)	1962
Running time	106 min.
Country	UK
IMDb profile

Only Two Can Play is a 1962 comedy film based on the novel That Uncertain Feeling by Kingsley Amis. Sidney Gilliat directed the film from a screenplay by Bryan Forbes.

The film is set in the fictional South Wales town of Aberdarcy, and largely filmed in and around Swansea.

[edit] Plot

Peter Sellers is John Evans, a poorly paid and professionally frustrated Welsh librarian and occasional drama critic, whose affections fluctuate between a glamorous woman Liz (Mai Zetterling), and his long-suffering wife Jean (Virginia Maskell).

When a higher paid job comes up, Evans is reluctant to apply but is persuaded to do so by Jean. Then he meets the obviously attractive Elizabeth Gruffydd-Williams (Liz), a designer with the local amdram company and wife of a local councillor.

Liz offers to intercede with her husband in getting Evans the job, but makes it clear that she is attracted to him. Evans is easily seduced into an affair.

In due course, Evans is offered the better paid job. But it all comes unstuck when Jean learns of the affair and she retaliates by starting an affair with her old flame Probert (Richard Attenborough), a self-important literary character and dramatist. He also loses the friendship of his colleague and best friend Ieuan Jenkins (Kenneth Griffith).

Evans, finally realising the price he has paid, breaks off the affair with Liz and takes a job as a mobile librarian, in the hope that this will keep him away from predatory women. Jean is not so sure that he can resist them, and tags along to keep an eye on him.